


evocatio

by lapoesieestdanslarue



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Blow Jobs, Fluff, M/M, Minor Angst, can't believe that's actually a tag i'm putting on this but, i mean there are bees !!, it's supposed to be a farmer fic but it's basically just sappy boys in the country??, why am i like this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 00:36:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12759489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapoesieestdanslarue/pseuds/lapoesieestdanslarue
Summary: Evocatio;a latin word, referring to the method of how an army would try to tempt out a god or goddess from a city in order to ransack it.or; Louis is torn between the dead-end life he'd had in Doncaster and left long ago, and his new life in London. Mostly he's just confused by and halfway in love with the farmer that has long hair and green eyes.





	evocatio

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo this has been in the works for.... a good while now? And I owe a massive, massive thank you to [eden](http://dreamsmp3.tumblr.com/) for not only beta-ing it for me but being all-round the best cheerleader ever and convincing me it was actually worthwhile.
> 
> I feel so nervous posting this but i hope you enjoy it!
> 
> (there's a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/miajunesherry/playlist/4Ae7HBxRz7MRHLXCF7tNoj/) for this fic that I highly highly reccommend you listen to for... ambiancé)

_Darling_

_I'm gonna build you something_

_Sweet thing you need something better_

_Let me build you something better_

_Heaven_

_It's lonely in your heaven_

_Darling we should get together_

_I could worship you forever_

_How do I tempt you_

_Out of the city_

_Out of the city tonight?_

_~*~_

**_Evocatio;_** a latin word, referring to the method of how an army would try to tempt out a god or goddess from a city in order to ransack it.

 

Louis Tomlinson is dirty, beat up converse that he’s had since he was 15, once white and now a dull, faded grey. He’s the sliver of sun that peeks up over the hills just before it rises fully. Louis Tomlinson is a riot, a menace, trouble with a capital ‘T’, according his teachers. He’s hot tea on cold mornings when the fog is so thick you can hardly see, he’s a glass of cold water in the middle of the night when he finally stumbles home from the pub. He’s a soft hoodie and ripped jeans, the feeling of finally cutting your hair when it’s been shaggy for so long. He’s a quiet stirring in your chest, a soft whispering, compelling you, imploring you- _you could be so much more than you are._

~*~

Bright lights and the _thud-thud-thud_ of the beat from inside the club scream outside the building. The night air is cold on his skin, sticky with sweat and pub juice, and he thinks someone’s spilled tequila on his left leg. 

His head is still ringing, wrecked with the noise and the madness and the jaeger bombs but Stan’s words cut through it all. Like a slap in the face or a punch in the gut, the buzz is gone and he’s left feeling like someone’s taken the ground from beneath his feet. 

“You’re _what?”_

Stan grins around the rollie in his mouth. “London, baby.”

London. Thousands and thousands of miles away London. Visited once for a school trip London. Had plans to visit but was never really arsed to follow through with it London. 

Louis gapes, open mouthed like a guppy fish, and Stan has the audacity to laugh. 

“Fucking London,” he mutters over the din. “What’s in London for you?”

“Well for those of us not content to just sit about our arse all day on a degree we actually worked for, there’s jobs.” It’s a joke, and it is, really. Stan’s only teasing. And Louis _knows,_ it is a bit of a joke. Mid-life crisis at twenty-two with a degree from a middle of the road university, still living at home on a barely-surviving farm. Stan exhales a breath of smoke, tendrils of it curling up into the night air, dissipating. He frowns, and looks sorry for the first time since they started this godforsaken conversation.

 _‘I only asked for a smoke,’_ Louis thinks dumbly, resting the back of his against the red brick wall. 

“Christ Lou,” he sighs. “You didn’t expect the whole world to freeze, did you? I’m not like you, I can’t just sit at home all day and do nothing. I’m bored out of my tree. I can’t wait to start working again, to be honest with you. Finally _do_ something with my life.”

“So I’m just a low-life slacker then, is that it?” Louis snaps, the first flash of emotion he’s felt, cutting through the numbness that he’d begun with. Sadness, _desperation_ weighed heavy on his chest until something turned it sharper, and it speared through his lungs and now every breath is laced with anger.

Fuck Stan. Fuck London. 

“No, Louis. You know that’s not what I’m saying-”

“Then _what_?! What the fuck are you saying? That you’re too good for me? For this? What the fuck does London have that a fucking computer science degree can’t get you here?”

“ _Life_ , Louis!” It’s not until Stan screams it back to him that he realises how loud he’d been, how forceful his words were when they were tinged with red. “I can’t- I can’t just _sit_ and stare at cows and survive. I can’t. That’s not me. I’m not built to just survive, the bare minimum of existence. I want to live, I don’t want to sleepwalk through my life. I want to experience it.”

He takes one last drag of his rollie and flicks the butt of it on the ground, stamping out the embers with the heel of his shoe. 

“You could come with me, you know,” he says, soft as the night. “Me and you, against the world. You could _do_ something, Lou. Get off the farm, get away from your mum and the girls and Dan for a bit. It might be really good, you might love it. I reckon you’d love city life. Might dust off a few of those cobwebs you’ve got stored up in there.” His fist connects lightly with Louis’ temple. “I’ve got a two bedroom flat and everything, saves me looking for a roommate.”

This is too much. Christ, this is too much for one night. This isn’t what it was supposed to be, this isn’t the kind of chaos he was chasing. He wanted something hard and fast and not messy like this, something he could blow up and never have to look at the rubble again. Not this. Not this life-changing, ground-breaking decision, something with consequences, something with aftershock. Not something that leaves a mark, or a scar. 

Just a few feet from them are girls with messy mascara sobbing on the phone because ‘ _he just left me, he just fucked right off to some other girl’_. Boys trying to scab cigarettes off one another, shooting fleeting glances to the broken hearted girls that line the walls, probably knowing the man behind the cause and effect.

“C’mon Lou,” Stan wheedles. “You can’t tell me this is all you want to do with your life. At least tell me you’ll consider it.”

Truth is, Louis can’t consider it, not right now. Right now, his head is going a hundred miles an hour, his body feels like it’s in free-fall, the blood is rushing from his face again and again and again. 

He shakes his head, mouth downturned. “M’going home,” he mumbles. 

“Aw Lou, c’mon. I didn’t mean-”

“I’ll text you, yeah?” He says, voice louder as he pushes himself off the wall, legs carrying him away. “I’ll text you.”

The bright orange lamp lights illuminate his way through the deserted street, little bulbs of fluorescent heaven in the hell of a town he wandered through. God, he doesn’t even know what he’s doing. He turns a corner and slowly, through the cacophony in his mind, he realises that he’s going to the train station.

Behind him the pulse of this small corner of Doncaster gets weaker with every step he takes, the neon lights getting weaker and the electric thumping of bass lines from speakers becoming a faint whisper in the night breeze. In the back pocket of his jeans, his phone buzzes incessantly. Either his mum telling him not to drink the last of the milk when he gets in, or Stan apologising.

He’s too tired. He’s too tired for any of this. 

Recently, it’s like someone’s knocked the air out of his lungs, stomped out the fire in his belly. He used to be driven, used to like getting stuck into something, used to have a plan. 

Then he got his degree, and a job he’d thought he’d had fell through. And he came home from university, back to the farm and the cows and the sheep and it was like someone pressed pause. It was like with every CV he sent in that returned nothing he went cold, stagnant, barely-there.

He can’t pinpoint what happened, what exactly was taken from him. All he knows is, he’s too exhausted to figure it out.

Taking a seat on the cold metal bench, he sighs and scrubs at his face. In his mind, through the veiled drunken haze, his mind flickers to what his mother’s face is going to look like when he stumbles into the house, a deep frown and a _“what time do you call this, mister?”_

Louis’ head conjures up the pale grey of the early morning sky, the sounds of Fizzy feeding the chickens and Lottie out with Dan, helping with the cows. His mother, in the kitchen, cooking a fry up.

The worried glances between his mum and Dan while he picks at his breakfast, the false innocence when she asks him if he’s applied for any more jobs, the annoyance in Dan’s face when Louis will reply, sullenly, for the hundredth time, _no,_ because there’s hardly any jobs for journalists as is, let alone in Doncaster. 

His mother saying “ _Well I know it’s tough, Lou, but you’ve got to get_ out. _You’ve got to start earning for yourself. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the bloody theatre or the chipper, you’ve got to grow up a bit and move on.”_

 _“And move out,”_ Dan will mutter. 

The way he’ll retreat back to his bedroom, play some fifa, stare at the skylight in his ceiling. The way he’ll let the minutes slip away, the hours pass in a messy blur and how life will pass him by. The way he’ll watch, and let it. 

He’s wretched back to the present by the rattling of the train tracks, the old, creaking machine shuddering to a halt in front of him. Sighing, Louis picks himself up and steps inside, completely alone.

Louis leans his head against the window, letting the trees and fields speeding past him numb the thoughts that eat away at him in the corner of his mind.

He’s been suffocating ever since he got back from university, so slowly he hadn’t really noticed. When Stan had hit him with the news that he was packing up for London, it had felt like a slap in the face. Looking back on it, it felt more like gasping for breath for the first time.

Louis had lost some piece of himself, here. He’d dunked his head into water and forgotten to breathe. 

London wasn’t a slap in the face. It was a hand at the back of his neck pulling him up for air for starving lungs. 

~*~

Morning is a shy creature, gently tugging him from the fractured shards of dreams that stick to the corners of his mind.

Louis blinks blearily, the bright light of the sun from the grey sky shaking off the last remnants of sleep. He lies in bed like that for a few minutes, staring up at his skylight, the realisation that this is probably the last time he’ll ever do this in a long time slowly dawning him. 

Remorse weighs heavy on top of his chest. This is it. Nothing will ever be the same after this. It’s drastic, dramatic, life-changing.

Today, in a few hours, he’s moving to London. 

After the conversation he’d had with Stan that Saturday night, it was like switch had been flicked on inside of him, igniting something he’d completely forgotten about, something he’d let sleep for too long. He’d talked about with his mum the next morning, the fears and hesitations and the _‘but-what-if-I-don’t-like-it’_ s. 

And then, that night, he’d asked Stan to save him a space in the front seat of his car and if he’d chosen what room what his in the apartment yet. _Their_ apartment. 

It was that simple, really. 

Except that it’s not so simple now, when he’s in his childhood bedroom, stacked high with memories, in a house that he’s literally spent his entire life in. He knows, it’s only a four hour distance, it’s not too bad, it’s not like it’s another country, he can come back whenever he wants. But it’s the circumstance of it, it’s what it is as a milestone in the life of Louis Tomlinson. It won’t ever be the same if he comes back. He’ll have moved on, in some way, he’s never going to spend anymore nights here in the same bed without thinking about his _other_ bed, in his other life. 

It’s growing up, he supposes. He’s not sure if he likes it.

He’s not dreading it though, Louis reasons as he brushes his teeth in the bathroom. It’ll be nice to have a change of pace, to have the freedom to do whatever he wants and not have his mum nag him about getting home at all hours. 

His mother murmurs a soft “ _morning, love”_ from around the brim of her morning cuppa. They eat in silence, each savouring the lasts. The last time Jay will be able to reach over and brush a strand of hair out of his hair, just because she could. The last time he’ll be able to grab a mug from his section of the cupboard. The last time he’ll be able to look out the window at the mist covering the gentle rolls of the green hills and not have to worry about it being the last time. 

“Where’re Dan and the girls?” Louis asks, disturbing the quiet peace the kitchen had been shrouded in. 

“Lottie and Fizzy are out with the cows, getting things sorted for the day, the rest are still sleeping,” she answers. “It’s going to be weird without you, Lou.”

“I’m gonna miss you, mum.” The confession weighs heavy on his tongue, the one truth he’d been reluctant to reveal throughout all of this. He’s never left home, not even for uni. With the campus only being an hour by train, he’d saved his family the money and passed on renting an apartment, deciding to commute by train instead. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it, in a big city, without you or the girls or Dan-”

“Oh my love,” she sighs, pulling him in for a hug. And _oh,_ he’ll miss this. He’ll miss the smell of her perfume, the feel of her worn dressing gown underneath his fingers, the way the anxiety melts from his bones. “You are so strong, Lou. I know it’s scary, but I also know you and I just know you’re going to take to this like a duck to water.” She pushes him back, warm hands framing his face. “You listen to me. This is a small town, Louis. There’s not much here for you, son. And you deserve more than just surviving, my love. I know it’s scary, Lou, but you deserve to live.”

He sniffs, nodding, and Jay’s thumb gently wipes away a tear he hadn’t realised he’d shed. She places a kiss on his forehead, before embracing him again. “Go out and say goodbye to your sisters one last time.”

Stepping outside is almost like stepping inside a dream, the morning fog wrapped around everything like a thin blanket. He makes his way down the dirt track to the paddocks, made muddy by falling leaves and rainfall. 

Louis’ lungs fill with the fresh air, the smell of grass and fertiliser and home. 

The cold, crisp air bites at Louis’s cheeks, the damp grass setting a deep cold into his bones and he shivers underneath his parka. It’s so lonely out here. Barren land, uninhabited green hills for miles and miles on end. It could almost be the end of the world. The very edge of humanity. Suddenly, through the fog, he sees three figures emerge. Lottie and Fizzy, standing with Dan in the middle of their field, doing a headcount of the cattle. 

It hits him properly then. He’s not just leaving his mum, or his meals handed up to him hot on a plate every night, or the cows or the dog or even the chickens. He’s leaving his baby sisters behind, the same people he’s meant to protect. 

Louis leans against the rusty metal gate, picks off a bit of peeling paint, remembers- almost with remorse- of how he’d never gotten around to galvanizing it like he’d promised. 

“Bye Lou!” Lottie calls, and he can see her breath in the air, the way her, Fizzy and Dan all start waving frantically, like shadow people against the white light of early morning.

“Love you,” He calls back, and hopes they don’t hear how the words caught in his throat or how his voice broke.

Time moves in a blur after that. He hugs the girls once, twice, three times, gets five back pats from Dan, two sloppy kisses from Ernest and Doris, and a final, weepy goodbye from his mother. Then he’s picking up his one little suitcase, and suddenly Stan’s there, helping him put it into the boot, and then he’s getting in the car and turning around, waving. 

In the driver seat, Stan whoops as they speed through the winding country roads, leaving Doncaster far behind. 

“We’re on to better things, Lou!” He exclaims, as they leave Yorkshire for good. “Kiss goodbye to all of that.”

A promise of never going back, poised for the breaking. 

~*~

Louis sighs into his coffee cup, the grey, eleven o’clock morning light already dulling his senses and lulling him to tiredness. 

In front of him his laptop is open, the stuck in the same spot it had been five minutes ago. The words within the briefing Dan had sent him swim around the page. It’s not like it’s anything new, it’s just another ‘new exciting’ take on _Macbeth_ that Louis knows for a _fact_ will be neither new or exciting. It’s the bloody Moat Theatre Collective, it’s not like they’re known for the different takes on the bard’s works. Quite the opposite, in fact. And they’ve still got a stick up their arse over that time he fell asleep halfway through King Lear. In the front row.

The point is, is that not even the excitement of the impending two days off can do anything to lift Louis’ spirits this Friday morning. Usually, the prospect of going home for the weekend helps to get him through the last few dragging hours of the working week, but this godforsaken play is looming over him, he’s got two other pieces that need to be looked at and the director from the Donmar Warehouse’s new production keeps dodging his emails. 

He’s broken out of his wallowing by a folder smacking down on his desk. “Alright Tommo?” 

“Heya, Zayn,” he answers, still slightly dazed. He picks up the cardboard folder, flicking through the prints inside. “These for me?”

“Yeah, Emily said to pass them on to you for that piece you’re doing on ‘ _Twelfth Night’._ You can take a look through them, give her a ring when you know what ones suit best and I’ll pass on the digital copies.”

“Brilliant, thanks mate.” 

“How are you, anyways, Lou?” Zayn silences whatever generic answer Louis was going to give with a look. “Don’t just say you’re fine. You look a bit shit, to be honest.”

“Just tired,” he answers, and that’s god’s honest truth if there ever was one. “Work has me up, and stuff. ‘S just… A lot, I guess.”

Zayn frowns, placing a hand on his shoulder in a comforting pat. “You need to relax, mate. Take a chill day, book a slot in a spa, go on a holiday.” He looks at Louis, seriously then. “How long’s it been since you’ve been home?”

“‘Bout six months,” he mutters, bracing himself for the lecture he knows he’s about to get.

“ _Louis.”_

“I’ve been busy!” Which is true. Louis loves Doncaster, but it’s _London._ His whole life is here now. He’s got a job that takes up most evenings, he’s got friends. And what, he’s supposed to drop all that for some cows and a field? He still chats with his mum on the phone, still facetimes the girls. It’s not like he’s abandoned them, or doesn’t want anything to do with them. 

“You need to go home,” Zayn says with a sense of finality. “You need to see your family again. Just to press restart for a bit.”

“Yeah. I…. Yeah, maybe,” he says, just to get Zayn off his back. 

They talk for a few more minutes before Zayn’s whisked off to a meeting, and Louis is left with a spinning head and jack-rabbiting heart, and an empty hole in his chest that he thinks is supposed to be filled by a place called home. He tries not to dwell on the fact that he still hasn’t managed to find somewhere to fill that gap.

He’s not really sure he ever will.

~*~

Louis Tomlinson has become a city boy. He’s fast, descending nights and bright lights, traffic whipping past you every which way and thousands of thousands of people surrounding you. Louis Tomlinson is the startled realisation that everyone around you is just like you, complex lives and thoughts and feelings just like you. Louis Tomlinson is rushing to get the tube every morning and every night, heart pounding against your chest. He’s the frantic sound of fingers on laptop desperately trying to pour his thoughts onto the screen in time to meet his deadline. He’s late nights in a city that never sleeps, watching small fragments of life unfold on the stage and loving it, regardless of how bad the plays actually are. Louis Tomlinson is truly horrific dramas that people pay too much to see, but also interesting, brilliant complex ones, victorious moments of revelry in intimate spaces, roaring applause and the thrumming of blood in your veins.

~*~

Coming home is a mix of relief and suffocation, a dreaded cocktail that twists Louis’ insides and also leaves him with a bitter taste in his mouth and more confused than ever. 

“Hello, my love,” his mother breathes into his hair, voice wobbly with tears, wrapping him into a hug the minute he steps off the train. “It’s been so long, my lovely boy.”

“Heya, mum,” he replies, hugging her tight. 

“C’mon, pet, and we get you out of the cold.” She beams at him, rubbing his back and leads him to the dusty range rover.

 

“Wait, you what?” Louis stops in his track from where they’d been on a walk, through the glade out onto the fields. 

“Yeah! He’s a lovely young man. Around your age, quite handsome….” Her voice trails off with a suggestive lilt and Louis rolls his eyes. 

“Don’t even start, mum. So you just hired this stranger off the street?”

Jay clucks her tongue, brightly coloured leaves crunching under her feet. “Don’t be so dramatic, Louis. His name is Harry. Dan was working on the fence after it’d blown over in the storm, and he lives a field over, saw him and offered to help.”

“You’re telling me a _young_ man chose to live in Doncaster?” He asks, catching up to her, hands shoved into his pockets. 

“No, I don’t think so,” She frowns. “I think he’s using it for extended farming space. He mentioned something about London.” 

Louis hums thoughtfully, looking out at the green fields, the colour so bright in comparison to the muted colours of inner-city London. They trek on in comfortable silence, until Louis spots the roof of the barn peaking over the hill. 

As they walk on, Louis starts to notice two figures underneath the arc of the barn, Dan and a taller man, who’s gesticulating wildly. 

He nudges his mum gently. “That Harry?” 

She gives him a look. “I think it might be.”

They approach the barn and Louis can make Harry out more clearly. He’s tall, certainly taller than Louis with the way he’s already towering over Dan and a tanned, defined face, slight rumpled with a frown. His voice is deep, but soft, and it drips slowly from the man’s lips, each word taking it’s time. “But I think if you-”

“Louis!” Dan breaks him off, throwing his hands up.

Louis can’t help but break into a grin, walking forward into Dan’s tight embrace. “How’re you doing, lad?”

“Not too bad,” Louis replies, smiling. “How about yourself?”

“Can’t complain. Harry here’s been helping me with the odd bits and bobs around the place.”

“Hi there, Louis,” Harry says, smiling widely, his eyes focused on Louis intently. 

“Hi,” he answers, giving him a quick smile back. “Do you have a farm ‘round here?”

Harry shrugs. “Kind of. My grandad left me his farm, but I don’t use it for much right now except for some extra space to grow some produce. The house needs doing up but I haven’t really got the time.”

Louis turns to Dan. “Are you going to leave me the farm when you die?”

Jay laughs out loud. “Louis, if we left you the farm we’d be homeless.”

“Plus you live in London,” Dan adds, and Louis huffs. 

Harry’s eyes brighten, like a kid on Christmas morning. “You live in London?”

He nods, blushing under Harry’s intense gaze for some reason he doesn’t really want to think about. “Yeah, um, by Canary Wharf.”

Harry is beaming at him like Louis just hung the moon for him. “No way! I live in London, in Richmond. I’ve got a stall in Camden, that’s what I’m growing stuff for.”

Louis nods, trying not to be endeared by the other man’s enthusiasm. “Sounds class, man.”

“Yeah, I-”

Above them, a beam of wood creaks dangerously. “You need to get that fixed, Dan,” Louis says. “I can fix that,” Harry pipes up. “It’s fine, we’ll call a professional.” Harry pouts. “ _I’m_ a professional.” “Well a more _professional_ professional,” Louis shoots back.

Dan laughs, as if this is the funniest comedy show he’s ever seen. “Ignore Harry, Louis, he’s just shooting shit.”

“I can help,” Harry insists. “Seriously. I worked for a year with a building company, before I went to uni. I don’t want you wasting money if it’s something as small as replacing a few beams in the roof.”

Louis shoots Dan a look that says ‘ _are you serious?’._ Dan grins. Harry looks at them expectantly. 

Then, Louis throws his hands up in defeat. “It’s your funeral.”

~*~

“And _then,_ he just-” Louis raises his voice over the roar that comes from the hustle and bustle of London. “He just _offers_ to fix the bloody barn himself. As if it’s no weight off his back- as if it’s a perfectly normal thing for a person to do. Stop laughing, this is serious. Have you ever had a stranger you barely knew offer to fix your bleeding house?”

That just makes Stan laugh harder, despite how much it’s set Louis’ world off-kilter. He’d spent Saturday down in Doncaster, before heading back to London on the Sunday afternoon. He hadn’t seen Harry since their first meeting on Friday evening, and all matters pertaining the barn and the enigmatic farmer that wanted to fix it weren’t brought up in conversation again. Now it was Monday afternoon, and Louis was using his afternoon off before the god-awful play he was going to have to sit through tonight to go to Camden market with Stan and pick up groceries. 

“To be fair, Lou, if you were living in the back arse of nowhere you’d probably be bored out of your tree. It’s alright when you're young because you’ve got school and stuff, but once you get older that shit must drag out. I’d say that was the most exciting thing to happen to him in months.”

“I just don’t know why he couldn’t have fixed his own barn first,” Louis grumbles, dodging out of the way of the sea of people that come flooding in and out of a narrow side street, the market stalls piled high on top of each other. “Or that huge house he got left by his grandad or summat, like-”

“Louis!” 

He stops in his tracks, frowning, and turns to Stan. “Did you-”

Stan points wordless infront of him, and when Louis turns around, there’s Harry. 

Harry, with one of the biggest smiles Louis’ ever seen, and his hair in a _bun_ , leaning over the counter of a food stall, waving. 

_Oh._

“Hi, Harry,” he says, trying not to sound as breathless as feels. Louis doesn’t do well with surprises and generally goes at all lengths to avoid them, but recently it feels like he’s getting slapped in the face with Harry Styles repeatedly, each time more bizarre than the last.

“That’s Harry?!” Stan hisses into his ear, but Louis doesn’t get a chance to respond because Harry is beckoning them over with a giant, ring-ladened hand.

“Come, come,” he smiles warmly, and both Louis and Stan immediately take a step forward, like they’re under some kind of spell. “How are you doing, Louis?” It’s funny, the way Harry says it, as if he really means it, as if he genuinely cares and he’s not just saying it out of obligation. 

“Good, yeah,” Louis replies, trying not to fixate at the soft strand of hair that’s come loose from Harry’s bun. He hadn’t realised his hair was so long when they’d first met, with Harry’s head covered by a beanie. It suits him, he supposes.

Louis’ jolted out of his thoughts by a sharp elbow to his ribs, catapulting him back into the moment. “Oh shit yeah- Sorry, this is my roommate, Stan. Stan, this is my…” Neighbour? Barn fixer? Friendly neighbourhood farmer? Fuck if Louis knows. “This is Harry.”

“Nice to meet you, Stan,” Harry beams, reaching his arm out over the counter and to shake hands.

“You too, mate,” Stan says, and they’re grinning at each other like they’re thick as thieves already. 

Louis clears his throat. “What are you selling, Harry? ‘ _Homemade, organic, GMO free apple chutney’_?” He tries not to let his disgust show on his face, but he must miss the mark judging by the way Harry starts laughing.

“Why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing?”

Shaking his head, Louis shoves his hands into his pockets. “There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just a load of bullshit.”

Stan punches him in the arm, hard. “Louis!”

“It’’s true! It’s a capitalist lie we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better about what we’re eating but it’s nearly the exact same as the supermarket.”

Harry is smiling at him, only fondness in his eyes, no resentment or offence. “Oh Louis,” he shakes his head. “I promise you, none of my stuff is remotely like what you’d get in the supermarket.”

And that, Louis would believe. What with the little painted bees all around the bright blue of the truck, the chalkboard proudly proclaiming ‘ _straight from tree to table!’._

“Look I tell you what,” Harry’s saying, handing him a jar of golden honey. “You try this in your tea, on your toast, whatever, and then tell me it’s better than Tesco’s finest.”

Louis squares his shoulder, inspecting the honey, the intricate design that litters the edge of the glass. “Alright then. How much?”

Harry looks at him funny for a moment, before his face melts into a slightly confused smile. “No charge, Louis.”

“You sure about that?”

“Positive.” He licks his lip, which Louis tries (and fails) not to notice, and looks slightly nervous when he says “And listen, if you ever need a lift down to Doncaster, my truck has more than enough room. Saves you the few quid, and all.”

There’s that patent Harry Styles slap in the face. It’s so unnervingly _kind_ , such a selfless gesture it takes Louis aback. “Oh. Thanks Harry. I appreciate that.”

He smiles at Louis again, like he’d just handed him the sun. “Anytime.” He hands him a business card, held delicately between his two fingers. “You’ve got my number so give me a call.”

“Yeah, might do.” He shoots Harry a smile. “Thanks, Harry.”

“Anytime.”

They’ve walked all of five steps away from Harry’s truck before Stan turns to Louis. “I see what you mean now, about the woodland-sprite vibe.”

Louis looks down at the jar of honey in his hand. “Yeah,” he says, distantly. “Harry’s something else.”

~*~

He doesn’t actually _plan_ on taking up Harry’s offer. But to be fair, he didn’t expect his mum’s heartbroken face when he was boarding the train, her making him promise desperately that he’d come back this time. Plus, Doncaster is nice this time of year. So sue him if he wants to go home again. Except he didn’t exactly plan on getting held back in work to finish that article, either. His fingers are aching by the time he’s done, and when he looks up and see’s the hour hand on the clock nearing seven, he feels his heart plummet into his chest. 

It’s not like it’s a big deal, he doesn’t know why he’s freaking out about it so much. 

(Except that, maybe he does. Maybe it’s because he’s been steadily ignoring the way his heart seems to be beating triple-time recently, the way that the city seems to be going so fast, too fast, all the time in perpetual motion and Louis feels stuck, running but never fast enough to catch up. He works too much but not enough, the hours are long but then when he has a day off he ends up working anyways because it’s one of the only things that will get all this pent up energy out of him. Maybe it’s because when he went home to Doncaster, time slowed down, stretched out like an eternity in front of him. That leaves him restless too. Maybe it’s because the simple act of buying the ticket and walking to the train station is one of the only things that actually feels Louis’ speed. Maybe it’s because he’s caught between too fast and too slow, maybe it’s because he’s yet to feel that click, that sense of belonging but at least jumping from one extreme to another can stop him from thinking about it, if even for a minute.)

It’s not until he’s typed in the number and pressed call that Louis actually realises what he’s doing. 

“ _‘Lo?”_

“Hi Harry? It’s Louis. Listen, I don’t want to inconvenience you, and I was fully planning on taking the train except I’ve missed the last one and the station is down for servicing tomorrow and I’m- It’s not even that big of a deal, like I don’t _have_ to go home tomorrow and I don’t even know if you’re planning on going down this weekend but I reckoned on the off-chance you were, I’d call and see if your offer still stands?”

There’s silence on the other end, and Louis tentatively asks “Harry? Is that alright, if I carpooled with you?”

Harry’s response is immediate this time, and utterly sincere. “ _Yes, of course, always, Louis_.”

Louis lets out a relieved breath. “Thanks so much, mate. Look, I can pay for petrol-”

“ _No, not at all. Don’t worry about it. What time will I pick you up?”_

“I just have to pick up my overnight bag at my apartment, I should be there in like ten minutes. Would 7:30 be okay? I don’t want you to have to drive in the dark.”

Harry chuckles on the other end of the line, deep and raspy and Louis does his best to ignore the warmth that blooms in his chest at the sound of it. “ _I’ve driven in worse. But if that suits you, it’s fine by me.”_

“Perfect. See you then. I’ll um- I’ll text you my address.”

 _“Later,”_ Harry drawls, sounding like a cigarette daydream.

It comes to absolutely no surprise to Louis when he discovers that Harry has absolutely horrendous taste in music, as he finds out when the man himself blasts ‘ _happy together_ ’ by The Turtles out of the car windows on the drive down to Doncaster, Louis’ arse having just touched the seat. “ _Me and you, you and me… so happy together_.” “Please,” Louis winces. “My ears are bleeding.” Harry, the fucker, only cackles. “Oh, Louis.”

They lapse into silence, the singer’s voice drifting between them, jovially singing about how _“I can't see me lovin' nobody but you, for all my life.”_

“Seriously,” Louis says after a minute. “Thanks. For the lift, I mean. I know it’s a bit out of the way for you.”

Harry waves him off. “Only a few minutes. And I was happy to do it, really. ‘S nice to have some company for once.”

“Do you come down a lot?”

“For the last six months or so, when I moved my plants and stuff from the plot I’d had above my apartment to the house.”

“Oh yeah, your Grandad’s place. Or, well, your place now, I guess. Do you think you’d ever move down there permanently?”

Harry hesitates, pursing his lips and cocking his head to the side, mulling over his answer like wine. “I dunno,” He answers after a minute. “I’d never really thought much about it before, to be honest. I didn’t know my Grandad that well, my dad left when I was really young so I never saw much of him. And when I did, he was old and he’d lost most of marbles. I still don’t understand why he left it to _me_ , why he didn’t just leave it to my dad or something, but when it came up that it’d been left to me I’d just gotten the spot at Camden market and I had investors asking me if I wanted to have my own _shop_ and I guess I reckoned the space would’ve been nice.”

“You didn’t want to just sell the house and use the money to be a bigger plot?” Louis can’t catch the words before they tumble haphazardly out of his mouth, nosey and prying. “Shit, sorry, forget I asked. I’m such a nosey bugger sometimes. Just tell me to shut up and I will.”

Harry just laughs, which seems to be a recurring theme between them. “It’s alright. I thought about that, to be fair. But then I was thinking and… I dunno, but I just felt that there was something about it that was so right it was like it was fate. I know it sounds cheesy, but at the time I’d been kind of struggling with city life, a bit. It was so…. It was so much, all the time, I guess. I felt like I was constantly out of the loop. I thought it’d be nice to have somewhere to break away to, to relax and let it be just me and my animals and stuff. And maybe when I’m older, somewhere to like, grow old and stuff. Have a family.”

“You keep animals there?” Louis asks. “How does that work, with you down in London?”

“Niall,” Harry says, grinning slowly. “He’s studying farm management at Doncaster College, so I let him crash at the place so long as he keeps an eye on them and feeds them and stuff. I don’t have cows or horses or anything, just chickens. And the bees.”

“That were you get your honey?”

Now Harry really smiles, wide and proud. “It is. We’ve only just started out, we’re still new to it. What did you think of the bit I gave you?”

Orgasmic, life-changing, a religious experience. Louis hadn’t been a honey man before hand, but Harry must have spiked it with something, because he nearly cried when he’d first tried it, only a small bit, drizzled on the corner of his toast.

He’d worked steadily through in the week, on his toast and in his tea. By the Friday morning, it was nearly gone. 

“It was good, yeah,” he answers loftily. “Don’t know how it holds up to Aldi’s own but-”

Harry cuts him off, smiling madly, as if he’d just found out Louis had bought him a puppy. “You _liked_ it,” the long haired man teases. “I bet it’s nearly all gone, isn’t it?”

Louis stays silent for a second too long, long enough to give him away, and Harry laughs victoriously, pumping his fist. 

“Stan has a big appetite, alright?” 

“That’s a lie,” Harry says happily. “It’s alright, Louis. I’ll keep you stocked up so you won’t have to go without. Do you want to try the jam as well, or is that another capitalist lie?”

Louis scoffs. “Please. You know what I meant.”

Silence falls between them, again, Harry smiling and focusing on the road and Louis trying not to blush and watching the sky turn from the red to orange to pink in front of them. 

(It stays like that for all of five seconds, before fucking _Hall and Oates_ starts playing through the tinny speakers of Harry’s beat up red truck and Louis nearly has a fit.

“C’mon mate, don’t you have _something_ from this decade?”

Harry just laughs at him. Which, really, seems to becoming a theme between the two of them.)

(They’re sitting in the car with shitty 80’s music playing. Harry’s smiling and Louis’ blushing. The sun is setting. Louis’ heart beats out a solid, calm rhythm beneath his ribs, slow and steady and sure. He takes a breath and doesn’t rush for the next. It’s easy, he’s able to catch a breath and exhale, _easy._ He’s sitting in an old, rusted chevrolet truck beside a boy with green eyes and long hair who likes old music unironically, it’s the most relaxed he’s been in weeks. It’s like time just stops.)

~*~

Louis Tomlinson is cotton candy dissolving in your mouth, is the last few drops of snow melting and the sound of the droplets dripping off of branches and leaves. He’s the bare hint of the sun on a grey day, just enough to bring promise, he’s the thawing of ice, he’s flowers beginning, tentatively, to bloom. Louis Tomlinson is the quiet sneaking of Spring upon the world, he’s late night car rides and long lie-ins on Saturday mornings. Louis Tomlinson is caught between two versions of himself and only feels real when a long haired farmer with green eyes and flowers in his hair is singing _The Beatles_ at the top of his lungs out the car window.

~*~

Almost without warning, Harry Styles inexplicably becomes a real, tangible part of Louis’ life. Spring comes to a close, and summer descends in the fast rush it does, slowly but suddenly all-encompassing. The days ahead stretch into one long infinity, the whole world suddenly blooming bright, vivid green, the air conditioners come on as the sun shines down on them, and Louis’s weekdays drag until he’s hopping into Harry’s car on a friday evening. 

Dan’s barn does get fixed, eventually, in mid-June, and Louis wastes no time in pointing out how Harry was absolutely no help. He’d feel bad about being mean, but it’s worth it to see the deep red blush bloom on Harry’s cheeks and tinge the tops of his ears. It’s worth it for the way he tucks his curls behind his ear when he ducks his head, and the smile that hinges on his words when he protests and reminds Louis of the way he’d brought sandwiches and fixed the radio for them. 

(It’s worth it for the glint in his eyes when Louis laughs and admits that yeah, _maybe_ he is a bit useful.

“ _Maybe,”_ Louis says. “ _Still not to sure I trust you and your organic bullshit.”_

Harry, smiling soft and slightly exasperated and sighing " _Oh, Louis._ ")

Now when Louis comes down to Doncaster, he nearly spends more time with Harry than with his actual family. Louis is now nearly half of the farm to food machine that Harry’s so expertly crafted. Despite Louis’ initial reluctance, he’s actually finding himself…. enjoying it. Tentatively, but not hating it still.

(“I’m not milking cows with you and Dan, Harry.”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun! It’s beauty of nature, Louis. Feel it. _Embrace_ it.”

“I’d rather embrace an espresso, to be honest.”

“Louis. Come on. You can’t call yourself a farmer without having milked a cow.”

“I _don’t_ call myself a farmer. I don’t want to be one. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“ _Louis.”_

“...Fine. Just the once.”

It happens much more than once.)

 

Now, they sit in an overgrown field beside an old, abandoned barn, abound with wildflowers and long stems of grass, watching the lambs frolic and leap about happily in the mid-october morning. Louis pulls his knees tight against his chest as he pulling long stems of grass from the earth, pulling it tight around his fingers until it snaps in half. 

Louis and Harry. Harry and Louis. Harry looks at him, and then down at the daisy in the ground beside them. He plucks it gracefully from the soil, twirls it once in contemplation, before tucking it behind Louis’ ear. And then, Harry smiles, as if Louis was a garden come to full bloom. He smiles at Louis, and if this were different, it could almost pass for love, adoration. 

In his chest, Louis’ heart skips a beat, at the sheer thought of Harry loving him, of being able to bask in the warmth of Harry for the rest of his days. And then his heart breaks, because Harry is impermanent, Harry is fun, Harry is just here for the ride.

“Why’d you leave?”

Louis blinks. “Hm?”

“Why’d you leave Doncaster?”

Louis shrugs, concentrating on the daisy he plucked. He picks a white petal off, flicking it away and watching it dance in the wind. _He loves me._ “I guess… Stan was going. And that kind of got me thinking about what I was doing with my life. I dunno, I just…. Life was so slow for me, here. I felt trapped. I felt like a ghost, just going around the same haunts I’d always gone to, doing the same things I’d always done, all in the same town I’d always lived in. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t just sit there in my bedroom while everyone watched me waste away.” Harry’s eyes stay focused on him, unrelenting. It’s not an interrogation, it feels more like an invitation, so Louis shakes his head and plucks another petal. _He loves me not._

“I was so angry at the world, for so long. This place, man. This fucking place is the biggest paradox out there. Twisted me and ate me up then spit me out.” He shakes his head, an acidic smile on his face. “And now I’m coming back, more than I ever used to.”

“You got out though,” Harry says quietly. “You’re in London mostly now.”

“Yeah.” Louis sighs. “Yeah. Don’t you ever just get angry, though?”

Harry turns his eyes from Louis to the vast expanse in front of them. “Yeah.”

“Enough that you want to fight the whole world,” Louis muses thoughtfully, picking off another white teardrop from the daisy between his fingers. _He loves me._

“Yeah. I decided to fight the feeling, though.” He shoots Louis a small smile. “I have a feeling the world would win.”

Louis flops down on his back onto the grass with a thump, gazing up at the bright blue above them. A few seconds later, he feels Harry shift, and lay down beside him.

“ _‘I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life,’”_ Louis says quietly into the abyss, the words rolling off his tongue. The same awe he’d had when he’d first read them comes rushing through him, the ridiculously humbling experience of reading something and feeling that hand in the dark, someone to let you know that yes, this is real. This has been felt before.

“They’re not your words.” There’s a hint of teasing to Harry’s voice, Louis can almost hear his smile. Another petal gone. _He loves me not._

“They’re not,” Louis admits, grinning. “But they might as well be.”

Harry sits up, and starts rustling through his rucksack. Louis watches with curious eyes when he pulls out a weathered, leather bound journal, pages sticking out haphazardly and the cover drawn on. The other man flicks through it, and stops at a long page.

He lies back down beside Louis, and begins to read.

“‘ _We must get home--for we have been away_

_So long, it seems forever and a day!_

_And O so very homesick we have grown,_

_The laughter of the world is like a moan_

_In our tired hearing, and its song as vain,--_

_We must get home--we must get home again!’”_

Louis swallows, and chances a glance upwards. Harry’s cheekbones look like sculpted bronze in the July sun, his dark eyelashes framing his bright green eyes, only made more vivid in the sunlight. “They’re not your words, either.” The last petal gone. _He loves me._

Harry looks down, and holds his gaze. “Might as well be.”

~*~

Louis shakes his head resolutely. “No. You’re certifiably insane. No.” “Louis, you can’t tell me you’ve seriously never gone swimming in this river.” Harry smiles at him, like a madman, shirt already stripped off and _oh._

He hadn’t realised just how many tattoos Harry had. He’d seen the few on his arms, but he’d never seen the moth displayed proudly in the middle of his chest, the two swooping nightingales on his collarbones, the laurels by his hipbones, framing the light, fluffy brown hair by his navel and _no,_ Louis isn’t looking any longer. 

“It’ll be _freezing,”_ He protests weakly. 

“Good thing we’re hot and sweaty from the thirty degree weather then, isn’t it?”

“What if you drown? What if _I_ drown trying to save you?”

“Louis, the river is about five metres wide. We’ll be in and out in two minutes. I really don’t think that much is going to happen in the space between now and then, in such a small body of water.”

“This is ridiculous,” He grumbles, but he starts to pull his t-shirt over his head, and ignores the warmth that floods his belly at Harry’s triumphant shout.

 

Needless to say, they don’t drown.

But they’re sure as hell aren’t in there for only two minutes, either. Louis can’t really bring himself to complain, though, because the water’s a godsend of an escape from the scorching heat.

“I want to stay here forever,” Harry sighs, eyes fluttering shut, stretched out in the river water, sun beaming down on his face. “Forever is a long time,” Louis says, almost absentmindedly, as he continues to stare at Harry. The other man’s eyes flutter open and he stares back at Louis, not affronted or judgemental, but almost… Happy. And open. “Not with you, Lou,” He replies, impossibly quiet and reverent. “Wouldn’t feel like forever with you.” It’s times like this, when Harry says stuff like this and it’s them like _this_ that Louis truly feels alive. Like when he’d first moved to London, but on steroids. Like this, they’re immortal and vital and untouchable. From the deep, black water of the lake, Louis stretches his hand out to the sky, imagining himself catching whips of white cloud. He closes his eyes, floats, drifts lets himself become a star, luminous against the black night of the water below him. 

(It’s times like this that Louis realizes with a startling coherence that he’s running the risk of falling in love with a boy who makes him feel like he could fly if he wanted to, like he could have the world, all he’d have to do is reach out and take. And christ, he’s so terrified to love Harry, scared out of his mind with fear. Because what if Louis breaks him, what if Louis is just like his dad? There’s a small part of him that’s thinking that it will be the other way ‘round though, that Harry will be the one to love Louis hard and fast and leave him for dead, destroyed and ruined. Louis will crumble to the ground like rubble, like some ancient city and people will pass me in the street and think “ah, there’s the thing that love destroys.” The thing is, Louis will let him.) 

When he looks back across the water, Harry is still smiling at him, and Louis melts under his gaze, and smiles back.

‘ _Oh help,_ ’ he thinks.

~*~

Louis wakes with a start the next morning, the light of a sun not yet fully risen seeping through the crack in his blinds. 

He blinks, confused at what’s got him up at such an ungodly hour. The room is still around him, the rest of the house asleep and silent. Just as he’s about to turn over and go back to sleep, he hear’s a sharp rap at his window. Stumbling out of bed half naked he yanks the curtain back, wincing at the bright light. 

“ _Harry?”_

“Louis!” Harry’s staring up at him, hair tumbling down in long, wavy curls and his face is bright, eyes glinting with promise. “Come down.”

“What? No, it’s like the middle of the night.”

“It’s five in the morning, Louis.”

Louis stares at him, trying to work out if that’s supposed to sway him or if it’s some kind of joke. When Harry shows no sign of breaking, Louis asks “So?”

“C’mon, I want to show you something.” 

“Show me what?”

“You’ll see if you come down.” Harry’s breath is visible in the morning air, curling intricately up into the atmosphere, and Louis wonders for a second if were to reach out, if he could touch it. 

He sighs. “Fuck you.” Then he turns his back and starts shoving clothes on, before going outside to meet Harry. 

“What could be so important you need me now and not later? It’s practically dark outside.”

Harry’s smiling like the cat who got the cream, his eyes crinkling at the edges. “You’re gonna like this, Lou. Promise.”

 

“Harry,” Louis pants, feeling the sweat roll down his back. “Why are you dragging me up a mountain at the arse crack of dawn?”

“It’s only half five, Louis,” the other man answers serenely. “And we’re nearly there, so if you’d just shift yourself, you’d see.”

“‘M going as fast as I can,” he grumbles, but doesn’t object when Harry grasps his hand and helps pulls him over the sharp, jagged rocks. 

When he looks up, he realises they’re at the top. 

“Oh my god,” falls quietly from his lips. They’re standing at the top of a small mountain, and stretching out before them is the world. Vivid green is draped elegantly over the landscape like a blanket, shining like velvet. 

Harry tugs at his hand, smiling. “C’mon,” he says quietly. “I’ve got a good spot for us.”

Louis lets himself be pulled along, following Harry as he leads them to a small edge of a glenn, sloped but not steep. Harry sits down, and Louis ends up doing the same, because Harry still hasn’t let go of his hand.

“Watch,” Harry whispers, like they’re about to witness a magic trick.

They sit there, side by side. Harry has flowers in his hair and Louis has the sun and all the stars in his eyes as they watch the sun rise over the valley, illuminating the sky, turning it from pink to deep orange and eventually, to blue. He feels like a god at the dawning of the whole entire world, watching as animals begin to move about, as flowers begin to bloom, as faint but still there sounds start to rise up. 

They don’t say anything, they don’t really need to. The moment is tangible as is, and it feels like one of those things that if you talk about too much, will just slip away from you. But Louis never ever wants to forget this, so he stays quiet.

Eventually, the magic begins to slowly slip away from them as tractors start to fill up the road and little, ant-sized people start roaming the fields.

“‘S cold,” Louis says, quietly. “I can see my breath.”

“ _With my last breath I will exhale my love for you_ ,” Harry says wistfully. “ _I hope it’s a cold day, so you can see how much you mean to me_.”

Louis’ breath catches in his throat. 

“Lou.” Harry’s voice. Soft, unobtrusive. His fingers, ghosting over Louis’, dancing, like he’s playing the piano.

When Louis finally looks across at him, Harry’s inched closer, only a few inches apart. He lifts his hand up, his index finger tracing the curve of Louis’ face delicately, like he’s scared Louis will fly away. 

“Tell me not to,” Harry whispers, green eyes wide, deep pools made for Louis to drown himself in. “Tell me you don’t want to, and I won’t. Tell me you want me to go away, and I will.”

Then, it’s Louis who’s reaching out, squeezing Harry’s hip, hard. Harry might be worried he’ll fly away if he pushes too hard, but all Louis has ever really wanted is to be caught. “Don’t ever go away,” he says, low. 

“ _Lou.”_ A breathless whisper, dripping with relief, with reverence, with something sweet as honey. “Can I kiss you?”

Louis’ hand skims up the gentle slopes of Harry’s body, vowing to map every inch of it to memory later, before coming to rest by his neck. He tugs, ever so slightly, at the back of the other boy’s neck. Harry doesn’t ask, doesn’t question, doesn’t even smile. He just looks at Louis like he’s answered his prayers, and leans forward, pressing their lips together. 

It’s not like, fireworks, or anything. There’s no spark of electricity or a sudden drive of mad desire. 

Louis has felt this longing burn deep inside of him for so long, he’d wondered if anything would ever mount it. But this, now, is something he’s never felt before.

In the quiet of the valley, a small gasp escapes him, before Harry’s licking the roof of his mouth and it’s so much Louis nearly wants to die. It’s warm and it’s sweet and it’s something he wants to take to his grave. The push and pull of their lips is like the melody of a song, intricate and impossible and waking up things in Louis that he’d thought had long been put to bed. It’s the sound of the valley waking up below them, the song of the sea calling a sailor home, it’s a hand in the dark leading you to safety. It’s Harry, Harry, _Harry._

~*~

“Harry, Harry, _Harry,”_ Louis pants, his hips twitching involuntarily as Harry sucks another bruise in the crook of his groin, tantalizingly close to Louis’ dick. 

“D’you want me?” He murmurs lowly, his hot breath sparking fire across Louis’ body.

“Yes,” Louis gasps. “Fucking- _Yes,_ Jesus Christ.”

“Just Harry is fine,” the other man says, and Louis can fucking _feel_ his grin, that absolute-

_“Oh.”_

Any snarky comment that Louis might have said is wiped straight from his mind as his brain shuts down, white hot taking over as Harry swallows him down. 

He just takes him, as if his magic mouth was made to fit Louis’ dick. His fists twist in the sheets, but then Harry starts hallowing his cheeks, and _sucking,_ and suddenly it’s not enough. With a shaky hand, he twists his fingers in Harry’s long, long hair, and then Harry moans, low and desperate, as if _he’s_ the one getting sucked off. 

“Fuck fuck fuck- Harry, _fuck.”_ He tugs at the curls again, and Harry’s hooded eyes look up at him, his pupils blown and _christ._

“I’m gonna come if you keep going,” he says, a little desperately, a little embarrassed because it hasn’t even been five seconds and Harry’s already brought him to the edge.

Harry looks at him, with a glint, and then swirls his tongue around Louis’ tip and he swears he stars, then and there. A whole galaxy unfolds in front of him as Harry sucks and kisses and licks, as time stops and it’s just this this _this._

Louis comes with stuttering hips and a shout, his hands still in Harry’s hair. He takes one single, heaving breath, before he’s yanking Harry up into a messy kiss, open mouthed and messy but the perfect compliment to the pleasant burn he’s got running through him. He can feel Harry’s dick, straining in his underwear, rock hard against Louis’ thigh. 

Harry goes to touch himself, but Louis bats him away.

“Let me,” he says quietly, one hand still in Harry’s hair, the other making its way down until it reaches Harry’s boxers, barely giving the other man a chance to breath a sigh of relief when his dick finally springs free, before he’s tugging gently at Harry’s long hair and giving him long, languid strokes, twisting his wrist just right so that Harry starts moaning breathily.

“Lou,” he groans, husky and rough, and it sends a shiver down Louis’ spine because his voice is wrecked.

He presses a kiss to the base of Harry’s adam’s apple. “C’mon, love.” At that, he’s spurting hot, white streaks onto his belly, shaking.

Louis swipes at droplet with his thumb, before locking eyes with Harry’s hungry grace, and licking. 

“Mm,” he hums. “Tastes organic.”

Harry blinks, and then punches him in the arm. “You dickhead,” he says, but he’s laughing and sounds like he literally just got a handjob, and it’s the happiest sound Louis’ ever heard. 

They lie there for Louis doesn’t even know how long, only allowing Harry to leave the bed once to get a washcloth for them. 

“Lou,” Harry whispers, his head cradled in the crook of Louis’ neck and his hair being brushed by Louis, fingers carding through the rich curls. 

“Mm?”

“I just, um,” Harry clears his throat, his index finger idly tracing the bow of Louis’ lip. “You should know that I’m, um. I’m quite gone for you. So if you want to keep doing this, if you want it to be casual, I can’t promise that I can keep it casual. I can’t promise I’d be able to do that. Just so’s you know.”

And god, Louis just melts. Like ice-cream in a microwave, he completely dissolves at the amazing, kind, _sweet_ man’s words. It’s here, when their legs are tangled together and their heartbeats are beating out a syncopated rhythm and their lips are brushing off every point of one another by sheer proximity, that Louis realises he is absolutely helpless to do anything but fall more and more in love with Harry Styles everyday.

“Harry,” he whispers, sounding like a lovesick prat even to his own ears. “I don’t want to keep it casual. Not at all. I want… I want _you._ I’m fairly gone for you too, y’know. I think even more than you.”

“Not possible,” Harry murmurs, and when he presses a kiss to the corner of Louis’ mouth, he’s smiling. 

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” Louis asks, fingers dancing over Harry’s chest, trailing up and down. “Give me a sign or something.” Harry swats his hands. “I did. God, Lou, I was crazy for you. I offered to fix your barn. I gave you free honey and tried to get you to drive down to Doncaster with me.” Something clouds Harry’s face then, and he bites his lip. “Actually, um… Can I tell you a secret?” Louis looks down at him. “Go on then.” “I don’t actually know how to repair barns. I never really helped on that building site I just did the accounts-” Louis cuts him off, high peels of howling laughter, and only stops once Harry kisses the smile off his face and replaces it with something resembling pure bliss.

~*~

“ _Tomlinson_!” Ray shouts from across the office. 

Rolling his eyes, Louis peaks his head over the partition of his cubicle.

“Alright?” he asks, trying to keep the snark out of his voice.

Ray waves his hand in a ‘come hither’ motion, and Louis tries to keep his huff of frustration to himself. Going by the way Louise snickers in the cubicle beside him, he doesn’t do a good job of it. 

He strides down the carpeted corridor, hand quickly flying up to his hair to a tug a stray lock back into place. Ray beckons him inside, holding the door open as Louis slips inside muttering a quiet ‘thanks’ as he sinks into the chair before Ray’s desk. 

All in all, as an editor-in-chief, Ray’s not that bad. Yeah, he’s the type to set impossible deadlines every now and then, and sometimes you’re left head first in the deep end. Louis has been on the receiving end of a good few one a.m emails, asking him to cover some article of information or event or a last minute _‘can you make it to Ireland this weekend? Need someone to cover the film festival. Thanks. -sent from my iphone’_ text. But compared to the shit they’d pulled at The Times when he’d interned there, that was nothing. 

“What can I do for you?”

“More like what can you do for me,” he replies, in his big, booming voice. “Listen, Luke-”

“It’s Louis, actually.”

“Yes, Louis, right, of course. Sorry about that. Anyways, I’m going to cut the bullshit here. We love your work. You’re the right side of critical, you’re cutting and you’re funny. Your articles get a lot of hits, you’re popular with our readers.” He stops then, just staring at Louis, and a second passes with a beat before Louis realises he’s not pausing for dramatic effect.

“Oh, em- Thank you. That means a lot.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. Here’s the rub- Pauline from theatre is leaving.”

Louis’ mouth drops open. Pauline was the head of the theatre section, she’d been here for years and he’d spent the majority of his time working under her eye.

“What? Why?”

“She found a better job,” Ray says flippantly. “Now this is the thing, we need someone to take over as head of the theatre section. It’s a bit of a step up, you’ll have to keep an eye on everyone else’s pieces as well as working on your own.” Ray is looking at him again, and a cocktail of apprehension and excitement floods his chest. “Tomlinson, we think you’re the man for that job.”

“Me?” he says, trying to keep the squeak out of his voice. 

“Yes, you. So, what do you say? The hours are long but the pay is great.”

Louis’ mouth opens and shuts three times before he gives up, completely speechless. 

“C’mon, Tomlinson,” Ray goads. “Do you really need to think about it?”

“Yeah, no, I just- I mean, thanks so much for thinking of me, but it’s just… I wasn’t really expecting it, is all. Big shoes to fill, and all.”

Ray waves him nonchalantly. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Tomlinson. It’s nothing you can’t handle.” He must still see the apprehension in Louis’ face, because he leans forward, frowning. “What is it?”

“It’s- It’s nothing big,” he starts. “But, y’know, I’ve got my whole family back in Doncaster and my boyfriend and it’s just that- Well, I usually go back down every other weekend and I dunno if I’d have the time for it if I got this promotion.”

“No,” Ray admits. “You probably wouldn’t. But you’d have the money and the holiday time worked up to take them on a bloody trip to Disneyland, if you fancied.” When Louis doesn’t answer immediately, Ray shifts in his seat. “Look, Tomlinson, this is a serious offer. You’re a talented lad. Annoyingly talented, to be honest. I think you could teach us all a thing or two. This is only a stepping stone for you, Tomlinson, I think we can all see that. I’ve already put my arse on the line to get the board to consider you. I know you’re a family man and that means a lot to you, but you’re a young man in a city with a lot of opportunities. Don’t let something as small as home keep you from this kind of promotion most people work their entire lives for.” 

Ray looks at him, his features softening slightly. “Louis, lad. I can’t promise that if you turn this down, another offer will ever come your way. Look, how about you sleep on it for the weekend?” “Yeah, I um- I’d appreciate that.” Louis stands, and shakes Ray’s hand before he leaves the office. 

He leaves the office with shaky legs and a spinning head, a heart that’s going triple time and pulling him twenty different directions. 

~*~

“Y’alright?” Harry asks, as they pull up in front of Louis’ flat, the car screeching to a halt. “You’ve been quiet. Something on your mind?”

Louis averts his eyes, looking down at his hands.

He bites his bottom lip, tempted to keep it like that. Maybe it he just clamps his mouth shut, and if he doesn’t say anything, ever again, nothing will happen. 

But then he feels Harry’s eyes on him, and he knows in his heart of hearts that Harry deserves to know, deserves to be a part of this decision. 

“I got offered a promotion at work,” he begins, his voice small. 

“That’s fantastic, sweetheart.” Harry’s using that soft voice he sometimes does, and Louis just knows he’s smiling at him like he always does, like Louis is every good thing in the world, and it makes Louis want to cry. 

“But it, um. It would mean I’d have to stay in London, a lot more.”

Harry is silent. “Right.” He draws his answer out, trying to test the waters. “Well, you could still come down to Doncaster every few weeks instead of-”

“ _No,_ H, it’s not that easy,” he sighs, exasperated. His voice is thick and his heart is thudding, having replayed this scenario a hundred different ways a hundred different times in his mind. He’s overreacting already, he knows, but he’s- Louis has gone through this conversation a thousand times in his head, this has been occupying his mind ever since he walked out of Ray’s office. There’s tension in his bones, coiled tight, waiting to pounce. “I wouldn’t be able to. I’d be _working._ Interviewing. Going to premiers and doing the circuits. I wouldn’t have time for the four hour commute up and down to bloody Doncaster.”

“Okay, Lou, it’s fine. Lou, baby, look at me.” When Louis finally chances a glances, Harry is looking at him with a smile, all soft eyes and fluffy-haired, and it almost makes Louis want to cry. “I’m so happy for you, my love. Just calm down, alright?”

“I _am_ calm, I just-” he lets out a huff of air, heels of his palms digging into his sockets. There’s Harry’s soft fingers, brushing once, softly over his hair, a gentle whispered “ _Lou.”_

He’s nervous. He doesn’t understand why but his chest feel like it’s about to explode, his ears are ringing and there’s a numbness creeping into his fingers. 

“What’s the matter?”

“I just- I _want_ it, Harry. I want to take it so much, I want that _job_ so much. But then… then there’s you. I’ve loved being with you so much, and going home- For once, I was looking forward to going home, looking forward to _you._ I want both of them, but I have to choose and I can’t, Harry, I couldn’t-”

“Louis.” Harry shushes him, low and rumbling. “You don’t have to choose, nobody’s making you choose anything.”

“I _do.”_ God, he’s nearly on the verge of sobbing with the weight that’s coming with having to explain this to Harry. “Because Doncaster isn’t going to matter when fucking Kenneth Branagh's agreed to do an interview or I’ve got to review for an opening night or- or someone gets their article in late or not at all and I have to clean up the mess. I’m not going to get the bloody West End to reschedule their shows so I can swan off to a farm,” Louis’ mutters, sounding like a petulant child. “Christ why can’t you just be happy for me?”

“Louis,” Harry says, his voice hard and firm. A warning- don’t push. “I’m over the moon for you, of course I am. Don’t me me the bad guy just because you’re torn.”

“Well, what do you think I should do?” It’s a challenge, and Harry must hear it in his voice because he bristles, and looks Louis in the eye.

“I think you should do whatever makes you happiest.” He sounds sincere- stilted, but sincere nonetheless.

“What about what makes _you_ happiest?” Louis shoots back. 

“Why are you doing this?” Harry asks, getting exasperated, his voice is a harsh sound, unlike anything Louis’ ever heard from his mouth. “What, do you want me to give you my blessing to run away again? Like you did for so long before?” He taps the steering wheel, shaking his head. “You know that was one of the first things your mum ever said to me- all about her lovely son, who left one morning and then never seemed to come home again. God, Lou, of _course_ I want you as near to me as possible, of course I want you to be happy but- What do you _want_ from me? Are you trying to let me down easy?” Harry’s eyes are turning harder, colder. “Is this- Was that what all this was about, then? Is that what I was to you? You’d suffer Doncaster if it meant you might get a nice shag out of it?”

“No, Harry, you _know_ that’s not what it was,” Louis says hotly. “Just grow up, for fucks sake! We don’t all have the money to flounce about with our bees and organic honey and get left big farms. I live in the real world, I have to make choices.”

“And those choices are more important than your family? Your boyfriend?”

“Stop making this about that!”

“But that’s exactly what it’s _about_!” They’re both yelling now, and it’s ugly. It’s horrible and not at all what Louis needs and he just. He can’t do it.

“Oh fuck this,” Louis snaps, grabbing his bag and wrenching the door open, slamming it shut behind him. He’s trying his very best not to cry but when he hears Harry’s car speed off not a second later, he’s given up before he even gets his key in the door.

~*~

“Has he texted at all?” Stan asks quietly from the opposite end of the sofa.

“No,” Louis says, trying not to sound glum. It’s Sunday evening, five hours after Harry and Louis’ fight. He’s too stubborn to pick up the phone himself, but he still feels like he’s been wronged, somehow, by Harry’s reaction.

“Do you think…” Stan clears his throat. “I mean, I know you have to give them an answer by tomorrow morning, so do you… Do you think you’ll say yes?”

Louis sighs, head lolling back on a cushion. “I’ve wanted this for so long,” he says quietly. “I just… I finally found something I loved, in a city I loved. I love it so much, I was never even working for a promotion. But it’s fallen into my life, I mean, Stan this is- This is what people dream of. It’s… I think I’d be good at it. I think I’d really like it, but I’d hate missing home.” He picks at a loose thread in the seam of the couch, fresh tears welling in his eyes. “I don’t know. I just… I dunno.”

Stan’s reply is cut off by a sharp buzz. On the coffee table, Louis’ phone screen is lighting up.

_**Text received from unknown number** _

**__** _Louis m8, it’s niall, h’s friend. I know something must have happened between ye judging by how much of a pain in the arse he was when he got home. Thought I’d let u kno bc ur probably the only person who can make this better._

Louis’ mouth goes dry, his heart starts to thump.

He looks up at Stan, like a deer caught in the headlights, begging for some direction. 

“Louis,” his best friend sighs, a small smile playing on his lips. “Go get your boy.”

~*~

Louis spends the whole walk to Richmond in a daze, trapped in his own thoughts. He’s never been to Harry’s apartment before, and it feels like a bigger deal than it should be. It’s not like they broke up, it’s not the end. 

(It couldn’t be the end. They could never end. Because Louis has this feeling in his bones whenever Harry looks at him, young and beautiful Harry, that gets him thinking they’re really something, could be _HarryandLouis_ forever and ever and ever because those green eyes- in those perfect green eyes Louis thinks he see’s his own feelings reflected. And if it’s been as real for Harry as it has for him, it won’t be the end. If Harry feels even a fraction of what Louis feels for him, it won’t ever be the end.)

Louis punches in the tenants code, remembering the way it had rolled off Harry’s tongue after they’d first started dating, a tentative invitation ‘ _if you ever find yourself ‘round that part of town’._ The recollection of that vivid memory- the way Harry’s hair had been falling down either side of his cheeks, the way sunset was illuminating his car. It nearly knocks the breath out of him, carrying him until he’s inside, and stabbing the elevator button. Except he gives up after just five seconds, deciding to walk- but really, run- the five flights of stairs himself. And really that’s just Harry, isn’t it, _five_ flights of stairs-

He arrives, breathless and slightly sweaty to Harry’s door. Before the anxiety that’s coiled around his chest tells him to do anything else, he reaches out and knocks. Louis can hear him, can hear his feet on the ground, and every single fibre of him is screaming at him to run the other way. 

The door flies open, reducing any of Louis’ escape plans to dust. “Louis.”

Harry sounds surprised. He’s in his tracksuit bottoms and an old, threadbare white shirt, his hair falling in loose ringlets around his face. Louis opens his mouth, ready to speak, but he’s cut off by another “Louis.” Shocked, a bit confused. He supposes that’s what Louis deserved, really.

“I’m sorry,” Louis blurts out, before Harry can get a word in edgeways. The apology has been laying heavy on his chest since he got into his apartment. It doesn’t feel like it’s enough, but it’s all he has. “I was out of line and… Yeah. I’m sorry.

“Louis.” Except it’s soft this time. Impossibly so. And when Louis looks at him again, he see’s the dark bags under Harry’s eyes, the down turn of his mouth, the look of pure apology on his face. “I’m sorry,” he says, gently, leaning against the door frame. “I’m sorry I said all that, Louis.”

“It’s my dream, Haz,” he says quietly, desperately wanting him to at least _understand. “_ Like you and your bees and your farms, I’ve always wanted this. To have a voice, to speak for artists but it’s not even that it’s-” His words get eaten by the emotion swirling through him, swallowing him whole, devouring him. Louis takes one look at Harry’s patient, open face and he breaks.

“I just,” he sobs into his hands. “I love this city and I love what I do, but- I want _you_ , Harry. I don’t care about the farm or London or my job. I wasn’t missing a place- it was you. It was always you. You’re the first person to make me feel like I was okay.” Most of his is probably an incoherent mess to Harry, but if so, he doesn’t show it.

“Louis, Lou, baby. It’s alright love, calm down.” He shushes Louis, crowding into his space until Louis is wrapped tight in Harry’s embrace, his face in the crook of the taller man’s neck, Harry’s head resting atop Louis’. “It’s okay, Lou.”

“I want them both,” he whispers, clutching Harry’s white shirt, well aware he’s acting like a baby. “I want you and Doncaster and this but mostly I just- I want you, I want a life with you.”

“You can, Louis.” He presses a kiss to the crown of Louis’ head. “You can have them both, we can meet each other halfway. I was just… when you said all that, I was terrified. I thought you were saying goodbye, to your family and to me.”

“Never,” he says, but it’s muffled by Harry’s shirt. 

They stay like that for who knows how long, Harry rubbing soothing circles into Louis back, keeping him in his arms, whispering sweet comforts in his ear. 

After a while, Louis works up enough courage to speak again. “It wasn’t… It was you.”

“What was me, sweetheart?”

“The reason I started going back to Doncaster. It wasn’t just my mum and my family… It was you. You, um. You made it feel like home, for me.”

Harry pulls back, his face unreadable, until he bends his head, forehead knocking off of Louis’ own.

“ _Louis,”_ Harry breathes, tugging softly at his shirt, their lips almost touching, faint whispers against each other. His soft low voice, calling Louis home, bringing him to safety. “Louis, come home.”

And with a warmth flooding his belly and the electricity that comes when he presses his mouth against Harry’s, he does. 

~*~

Louis Tomlinson becomes sweet, sugary honey and warm cups of earl grey tea pressed into his hands with a kiss to his forehead from a sleepy Harry before he darts off to wherever he’s needed. Louis Tomlinson becomes a mix of his brown Oxfords clicking off the grey London pavement and his wellies he’s had since he was 16 plodding softly on the grass, wet with early morning dew. Louis Tomlinson is the smell of pavement after it’s rained and the sunshine on his face. He becomes a firm handshake, a cup of coffee, a foot tapping off the carpet in his office and black, bolded print at the bottom of a two-page interview spread professing his name. Louis Tomlinson is the man who makes people chuckle into their morning tea’s or while they’re waiting in line when he’s describing whatever failure of epic proportions is on at the Donmar at the minute. Louis Tomlinson is loved, so deeply, by a farmer with long hair- who loves his bees as a second best. Louis Tomlinson becomes lazy morning kisses while sunshine drips onto him from a skylight, becomes long car rides with Air Supply or U2 or Bowie blasting out the windows, becomes the smell of a bright spring morning. Louis Tomlinson is the lingering scent of of Harry left on his clothes after he’s spent the night (which is most nights, nowadays), is holding hands as you wander through Kensington on a friday night, is falling in love so comfortably it feels just like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this fic then please [reblog the post on tumblr](http://czernxy.tumblr.com/post/167657723719/evocatio-evocatio-a-latin-word-referring-to/) or leave a comment !
> 
> Now for the slightly more boring stuff;
> 
> “ _‘I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.’”_ This is a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby'.
> 
> The [poem](https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjsiYrf7sjXAhUsC8AKHYzGBQQQFggoMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fgenius.com%2FJames-whitcomb-riley-we-must-get-home-annotated&usg=AOvVaw0v6XCZkIjft_3Nei8Vn7GU/) Harry quotes to Louis is 'We must get Home' by James Whitecomb Riley
> 
> “ _With my last breath I will exhale my love for you, I hope it’s a cold day, so you can see how much you mean to me_.” This is a quote by Jaord Kintz.


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